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Virgin Births May Be Common in the Wild

A female copperhead snake (Agkistrodon contortrix) and her offspring born via parthenogenesis, also called virgin birth, described in a study reported Sept. 12, 2012 in the journal Biology Letters.

Wild female pit vipers can reproduce without a male, suggesting virgin births may take place in nature far more than before thought.

Asexual reproduction is common among invertebrates — that is, animals without backbones. It occurs rarely in vertebrates, but examples of it are increasingly being discovered. For instance, the Komodo dragon, the world's largest living lizard, has given birth via parthenogenesis, in which an unfertilized egg develops to maturity. Such virgin births have also been seen in sharks at least twice; in birds such as chickens and turkeys; and in snakes such as pit vipers and boa constrictors.

Although virgin birth has been observed in vertebrates in captivity, scientists had not yet seen it happen in the wild. This raised the possibility that such asexual reproduction might just be a rare curiosity outside the mainstream of vertebrate evolution.

"Until this discovery, facultative parthenogenesis — asexual reproduction by a normally sexual species — has been considered a captive syndrome," said researcher Warren Booth, a molecular ecologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. [7 Shocking Snake Stories]

The researchers collected genetic samples from long-term studies of the snakes — copperheads from Connecticut and cottonmouths from Georgia. They gathered specimens from 22 litters of copperheads and 37 litters of cottonmouths, both the mothers and their offspring. DNA analysis confirmed that in one litter from each species, the offspring were solely the product of the mother, with no genetic contributions from a father.

The researchers were able to analyze the large amount of data due to collaborations with Charles Smith and Pam Eskridge of the Copperhead Institute and Wofford College, S.C., and Shannon Hoss, a graduate student at San Diego State University.

"We just sat there stunned at the discovery," Booth told LiveScience. "This is something that we always believed existed, but in order to investigate it, it would take a massive amount of work in the field. … To detect it in both species in our first attempt was astounding."

"I think the frequency is what really shocked us," Booth added. "In the copperhead population, we detected one instance in 22 litters, whereas in the cottonmouths, it was one in 37 litters. Essentially, somewhere between 2.5 and 5 percent of litters produced in these populations may be resulting from parthenogenesis. That's quite remarkable for something that has been considered an evolutionary novelty, even by me up until this finding."

Pit vipers and many other creatures carry out meiosis, in which cells divide to form sex cells, each of which only possess half the material needed to make offspring. In the female pit vipers, pairs of their sex cells likely fused to generate embryos. The results were progeny that included only the mother's genetic material. However, these offspring weren't clones of the mother since they were not made using identical halves of her genome.

What limits virgin births?

How prevalent, then, is virgin birth? And could it possibly extend to humans?

"In terms of other species, it is evident now that reptiles are a group that appear predisposed to parthenogenesis, whether facultative, as we address here, or obligate, where the primary reproductive mode is parthenogenesis and few or no males are known within the species," Booth said.

Obligate parthenogenesis may have arisen from ancestral interbreeding between species, though scientists aren't sure why some animals seem to randomly give birth without help from the male (the facultative type).

"What is common to those that reproduce facultatively is the lack of genomic imprinting — by that, I mean a process in which a specific set of genes are provided by the mother, and a second set from the father," Booth said. "These genes of different parental origin must interact in a process called genomic imprinting in order for the development of an embryo. This, as far as we are aware, occurs in all mammals with the exception of the monotremes — platypus and echidnas — and therefore explains why we cannot have facultative parthenogenesis in mammalian species without significant intervention by scientists." [The 10 Wackiest Animal Discoveries]

Originally, Booth and his colleagues thought such virgin births might happen if potential mates were not present, but over the years, they have seen six captive female boa constrictors give birth via parthenogenesis even when males were around during their breeding cycles. The number of times virgin births have occurred with different females also seem to rule out a freak accident causing it to occur, Booth and colleagues said. They are now investigating other possible causes for these virgin births — "these include genetics, viruses, tumors and bacteria," Booth said.

In the future, the researchers also hope to investigate other species for virgin births, such as water snakes in Oklahoma. In addition, they plan to see how well the offspring of virgin births survive and reproduce. It may be that virgin mothers can establish whole area populations of snakes by themselves. "We will know if this is possible in the next two to three years," Booth said.

The scientists detail their findings online Sept. 12 in the journal Biology Letters.

A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday revoked his order requiring a recount of the state's presidential vote sought by Jill Stein, siding with a state appeals court that found the Green Party candidate had no grounds to mount the challenge. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith's ruling has the effect of halting the recount in Michigan, at least for now, following conflicting rulings a day earlier by federal and state appeals courts. The Michigan Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the recount stopped, while the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Goldsmith's earlier decision and said the process should proceed.

After inadvertently sending out a promotional email on Wednesday regarding the NES Classic Edition, Best Buy sent out a clarification email later in the day to confirm that it would in fact have the hard-to-find console in stock at retail stores beginning on December 20th.
Last night, Oscar Muñoz ( @oscarinmv on Twitter ) received an email from Best Buy informing him that the NES Classic Edition would be "available in all Best Buy stores tomorrow, December 20." At the time, "tomorrow" was actually December 8th, which explains why Best Buy had to send another email minutes later explaining that NES Classic Edition consoles would actually be in stores on the 20th (via: @matthewrex ).
https://twitter.com/matthewrex/status/806661882941583360
Unsurprisingly, there will be limited quantities available, so if you want to grab an NES Classic Edition from Best Buy later this month, you'll probably need to be at your local store the minute it opens.
Nothing in the email suggests that any stock will be available on BestBuy.com , but it still might be worth keeping an eye out on the website come December 20th. We'll be sure to update this post if we hear anything definitive about the NES Classic Edition coming to Best Buy's website.
If you don't want to wait that long, Amazon said on Twitter earlier this week that it would have "exciting announcements to make in the coming week" for NES Classic Edition fans. We won't know for sure until the retailer shares more details, but we have to assume that means Amazon will have more units soon as well.

Pakistani military helicopters on Thursday, Dec., 8, ferried remains of plane crash victims to the capital, Islamabad, as aviation authorities said they opened a probe into the crash that killed 47 passengers and crew the day before in the country’s northwest. The small twin-propeller aircraft was traveling from the scenic mountain resort city of Chitral to Islamabad on Wednesday when one of its engines failed shortly after takeoff and crashed in the hillside village of Gug in the district of, according to Pervez George of the Civil Aviation Authority. The plane belonged to the Pakistani national carrier, the Pakistan International Airlines, and had 42 passengers and five crew members on board, PIA spokesman Daniyal Gilani said. (AP) See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Tumblr .

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama man convicted of killing a store clerk is scheduled to be executed Thursday, but lawyers for the former Eagle Scout are urging it be blocked because a judge overrode a jury recommendation in imposing the death sentence.

Christmas decoration is displayed at the Christmas market near the ‘Marienplatz’ square in Munich, Germany; a fan dressed as a stormtrooper waves a mini light saber during the Japan premiere of ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ in Tokyo, Japan; and a view of light shining through a gate during a media preview event for the new summer exhibition ‘Versailles: Treasures from the Palace’ at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia are some of the photos of the day. (AP/EPA/Getty/Reuters) See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Tumblr.

A U.S. Marine pilot who ejected from an F/A-18 fighter jet off the eastern coast of Japan has been confirmed dead after being recovered earlier on Thursday by a Japanese naval vessel, military officials said. The Marine Corps identified Captain Jake Frederick as the pilot who ejected from his F/A-18C+ fighter aircraft after it went down 120 miles off the coast of Iwakuni, Japan. The Japanese Defense Ministry had announced earlier in the day that a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force ship had recovered Frederick.